Political Futures: How Will the LNP Cope with Trump’s Liberation Day?

By Denis Bright

On the fiftieth anniversary of Labor’s victory in 1972, ABC News reminded everyone that the LNP was ready to divert Labor’s focus from emergent problems like climate change and indigenous reconciliation. This style of conservative resistance to more progressive agendas became a political art form under Peter Dutton. It was directed against Labor’s hold on outer-metro and some regional electorates like Bendigo and Ballarat. Victorian federal seats were particularly resident to the LNP’s appeals in 2022. This reality may have changed in two years.

Some signs of the virulence of conservative populism were evident across Queensland and Tasmania even before the 2022 national elections. Marginal seats like Bass and Franklin in Tasmania swung against Labor in 2022 but not in sufficient dimensions to unseat Labor in Lyons on a primary vote of 29.04 per cent and just 50.92 per cent after preferences.

In Queensland, federal seats like Leichhardt, Longman, Forde, Petrie and of course Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson remained in LNP hands despite the unpopularity of the Morrison Government.

In December 2022, federal Labor was still in its honeymoon phase as measured by national opinion polling as communicated by Wikipedia:

 

 

Having decided to maintain a bipartisan commitment to the AUKUS deals as negotiated with the US and Britain by a cabal of just four Morrison Government ministers including Peter Dutton as Defence Minister, Labor proceeded to continue in the traditions of strategic secrecy. In retrospect, the AUKUS deal should have been subjected to Australian house and senate investigations.

Writing in The Guardian (14 March 2023) when federal Labor was still in its honeymoon phase with the electorate, Daniel Hurst and Julian Borger warned of the enormous financial burdens of AUKUS:

“Australia is to embark on one of its most significant, expensive and geopolitically consequential military tasks in a century: the push to acquire, operate – and eventually build – nuclear-powered submarines.

The program is forecast to cost $268bn to $368bn between now and the mid 2050s, most of it beyond the first four-year budget period, and will depend on help from the US and the UK.

As part of the multidecade nuclear-powered submarine plan unveiled on Tuesday, Australian taxpayers will pour “substantial” funds into expanding American shipbuilding capacity, understood to be about $3bn in the first four years.

Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Aukus plan marked “a new chapter” in the relationship between the three countries, as he joined the US president, Joe Biden, and the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, for the announcement in San Diego.”

Federal Labor’s leap of faith in the US Global Alliance is now being rewarded with attacks on fundamental principles of Australian public policies such as Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) which attracts the best price from Big Pharma suppliers in the US, Britain and Europe.

The Australian media landscape has already been well penetrated by commercial streaming services and Murdoch owned entertainment and news outlets. Staff from the US Trade Representative’s Office are operating out of diplomatic offices to diligently monitor Australia’s compliance with their perceived free trading protocols.

The Australian government commitments to the local media are scattered throughout the budget papers. The commitments include direct support of the local film industry, additional funding for the Film Television and Radio School in Sydney and support for public and community broadcasting. Precise estimates of the total public expenditure in support of the local media are difficult to find. Even if the total expenditure on government support for the Australian media reaches $50 billion, this fades into financial significance when compared with total expenditure on AUKUS and defence procurements and total government spending in support of the Australian media has not increased significantly since 2022.

Instead of supporting bipartisan criticism of the Trump Tariffs on the local and global economy, Peter Dutton persists with criticism of wasteful government spending (The Guardian 2 April 2025):

“Dutton’s being pushed again on what sort of cuts he would make to the public service and where.

The Coalition has promised to cut it by 41,000 staff – the same number that have been employed by the government over the last three years – but has said this won’t impact frontline services. Dutton also this morning wouldn’t rule out cutting the ABC.

The government has created an environment and an economy where they are increasing the public service by 41,000 people, three times the rate of the right Gillard Government… Increasing the bureaucracy in Canberra is not a way to deliver efficient services to families in the suburbs.

He adds, “I think it is important for us to live within our means,” a reference to the Abbott 2014 budget, when cuts were made to key services like health and the ABC.

Our own Josh Butler asks whether it’s fair: Dutton won’t say exactly where those 41,000 public servant job losses will come from?

I think you want to get back to reality and reality is in the suburbs: Here across the country where families cannot afford to pay bills and ballooning the public service by 41,000 is not an efficient way of helping families.”

FIGHT COST OF LIVING PRESSURES

Australians are suffering from the worst cost of living crisis in a generation. Our living standards have collapsed and for the last 21 months Australia has been in a per-capita recession – the longest household recession on record.

Australia has experienced the biggest fall in household disposable incomes of any developed country in the past two years.

We will fight cost of living pressures. By getting inflation down and alleviating household cost pressures, our standard of living can be restored and Australians can get ahead.

A Dutton LNP Government will:

• Rein in wasteful government spending that is fuelling inflation and get interest rates down.
• Deliver cheaper energy through our balanced energy plan, including renewables, gas and zero-emissions nuclear.
• Keep supermarkets from exploiting suppliers and consumers through new competition policy, including divestiture powers.
• Strengthen the Food and Grocery Code, increase penalties and establish a Supermarket Commissioner.
• Protect the retirement savings of Australians from unfair new taxes.
• Increase the amount older Australians and veterans can work without reducing pension payments.
• Boost housing supply and help young Australians overcome the deposit hurdle to entering the property market.

Readers can peruse the impact of the Trump tariffs on these cherished national expenditure priorities like support for the PBS and local media content. The LNP claims that phone calls to President Trump would moderate his excesses. Oblique responses to the Trump offensives against Australian sovereignty should be replaced by bipartisan open criticisms in the context of the long-standing loyalty of successive Australian governments to the US Global Alliance at the expense of trading and investment ties with China.

From caretaker mode, the Albanese Government can promise an immediate inquiry into the direct impact of the Trump Tariffs on the welfare of Australians and on their secondary effects on the economies of our trading and investment partners in Asia.

In the now marginal seat of Ryan in Brisbane’s Inner West which has been held by Labor for just nine months since the formation of the seat in 1949, the LNP has run out of progressive alternatives options to retake this blue-ribbon seat from the Green Party Member Elizabeth Watson-Brown to prevent an unexpected victory for Labor’s Rebecca Hack in the event of a marginal decline in the Green vote.

There is nothing to excite progressive voters in the Back on Track Strategies from the LNP which the local candidate highlights in her appeals to voters.

The LNP seeks to score the advantage in Ryan and other electorates with a letter-boxed delivered appeal to the convenience of postal voting on a holiday weekend for Labor Day in Queensland on 3 May 2025.

This repeats the postal vote strategies used by the LNP at previous elections at all levels of government as covered by my article for The AIM Network at the last state election in 2024 (18 September 2024). The addresses used for the return of postal vote applications to the LNP have not changed since the 2024 state election.

Both state and federal election campaign strategies were crafted by advertising agency Topham Guerin (TG) to wedge public opinion in support of motherhood statements which replace the real concerns of voters.

 

There is nothing wrong with assisting voters in their access to postal votes but the appeal is again delivered in envelopes which claim to deliver Important Electoral Information when the recommendations provided by the local LNP candidate are straight from the LNP’s Back on Track Document

Voters are given the choice of applying online to the AEC for a Postal Vote or sending an enclosed application form to a mysterious Postal Vote Application Centre in the Brisbane suburb of Archerfield which is a harvesting centre for LNP postal votes. This PVA Centre is merely a post-office box which needs to be investigated by media outlets. This is not a legitimate third-party attempt to assist voters.

The compatibility of this style of communication with Sections of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 needs to be investigated by the AEC with particular emphasis on Section 32IC.

Although the Greens narrowly won the seat of Ryan in 2022 after preferences by a 2.65 per cent margin, the LNP won the battle of the postal votes by a 4.53 per cent margin using the Postal Vote strategies which are being reapplied this year. The number of postal votes cast exceeded 20 per cent of all formal votes.

I have asked the ABC News editor in Brisbane to inform voters of the LNP’s postal vote strategies and their significance in an election which is being held on a holiday weekend. I can only ask politely and wait for a response to avoid future disputations about the validity of the election results in Ryan and other marginal electorates across the country where the LNP Postal Vote Harvest is up and running with letter-boxed mail outs that most political parties cannot afford to match on both financial and ethical grounds.

In this renewed era of conservative Cold War Populism, our Labor Government should not be afraid to make legitimate criticisms of the low standards of ethical credibility in LNP communications as Peter Dutton makes an all out bid to govern Australia from the harbourside at Kirribilli as the PM’s principal residence:

 

 

Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback from readers advances the cause of citizens’ journalism. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Replies Button.

 

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